The A. E. F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces

On the floor there was evidence that some patient hand had made a beginning of seeking to fit together in proper sequence all the available tiny glass fragments from the shattered rose windows. It was a pitiful jigsaw puzzle, which would not work. The curator stepped briskly up the nave, and at the end of a hundred paces he stopped.

"This is the most dangerous portion of the cathedral," he explained. "Most of the big shells have come in here." And he pointed to three great holes in the ceiling. Then he showed us the monstrous shell which had not exploded and the fragments of others which had. Down toward the west end of town fresh fragments were being made. Each hole in the cathedral roof sounded a different note as the shells raced overhead. But the old curator was musing again. He had forgotten the war, even though the smashed and twisted bits of iron and stone from yesterday's clean hit lay at his feet.

"The first stone of the present cathedral was laid in May, 1212, by the Archbishop Alberic de Humbert," he said. "Alberic gave all the money he could gather and the chapter presented its treasury, and all about the clergy appealed for funds in the name of God. Kings of France and mighty lords made contributions, and each year there was a great pilgrimage, headed by the image of the Blessed Virgin, through all the villages. And the building grew and sculptors from all parts of France came and embellished it and in 1430 it was finished. You see, gentlemen," he said, "it took more than two hundred years to build our cathedral."

We left the cathedral then and paused for a minute in the square before the statue of Jeanne d'Arc, who brought her king to Rheims and had him crowned. In some parts of France devout persons speak of the Jeanne statue in Rheims as a miracle because, although the cathedral has been scarred and shattered and every building round the square badly damaged, the statue of Jeanne is untouched. I looked closely and found the miracle was not perfect. A tiny bit of the scabbard of Jeanne had been snipped off by a flying shrapnel fragment, but the sword of Jeanne, which is raised high above her head, has not a nick in it.

Crossing the square we went into the office of L'Eclaireur de l'Est. This daily newspaper has no humorous column, no editorials, no sporting page and no dramatic reviews, and yet is probably the most difficult journal in the world to edit. The chief reportorial task of the staff of L'Eclaireur is to count the number of shells which fall into the city each day. That doesn't sound hard. The reporter can hear them all from his desk and many he can see, for the cathedral just across the street is still the favorite target of the Germans. Sometimes the reporter does not have to look so far. The office of L'Eclaireur has been hit eleven times during the bombardment and three members of the staff have been killed. One big shell fell in the composing room and so now the paper is set by hand. It is a single sheet and the circulation is limited to the three or four thousand civilians, who have stuck to Rheims throughout the bombardment. One of the few who remain is a man who keeps a picture postcard shop in a building next door to the newspaper office. His roof has been knocked down about his head and his business is hardly thriving. I asked him why he remained.

"I started to go away several months ago after one day when they put some gas shells into the town," he said. "The very next morning I put all my things into a cart and started up that street there. I had gone just about to the third street when a shell hit the house behind me. It killed my horse and wrecked the wagon and so I picked up my things and came back. It seemed to me I wasn't meant to go away from Rheims."

The shelling increased in violence before we left the office of L'Eclaireur. One shell was certainly not more than a hundred and fifty yards away, but the work went on without interruption. The printers who were setting ads never looked up. Mostly these advertisements were of houses in Rheims which were renting lower than ever before. If there was anyone in the visiting party who felt uncomfortable he was unwilling to show it, for just outside the door of the newspaper office there sat an old lady with a lapful of fancy work. A shell came from over the hills and, in the seconds while it whistled and then smashed, the old lady threaded her needle.

A day later, when some of us were willing to confess that of all miserable sounds the whistling of a shell was the meanest, we found a curious kink in the brain of everyone. It was the universal experience that the slightest bit of cover, however inadequate, gave a sense of safety out of all proportion to its utility. Thus we all felt much more uncomfortable in the square than when we stood in the composing room of the newspaper which was shielded by the remains of a glass skylight. The same curious psychological twist can be found among soldiers at the front. Again and again men will be found taking apparent comfort in the fact that half an inch of tin roof protects them from the shells of the Germans.

One is always taken from the cathedral of Rheims to the wine cellars. The children of darkness are invariably wiser than the children of light and the champagne merchants have not suffered as the churchmen have. Their business places have been knocked about their heads, but their treasures are underground deep enough to defy the biggest shells. In the cellar of a single company which we visited there were 12,000,000 quarts of wine. Even the German invasion at the beginning of the war failed to deplete this stock. Hundreds of people live in these cellars, which are laid out in avenues and streets. We came first to New York, a street with tier upon tier of wine bottles; then to Boston, then to Buenos Ayres, then to Montreal. One of the visitors explained that the street named New York contained the wine destined to be shipped to that city, while Buenos Ayres contained the consignment for the Argentine capital, and so on. We nodded acceptance of the theory, but the next wine-laden street was called Carnot and the next was Jeanne d'Arc.

From the cellars we made a journey to a battery of French .75's. It was a peaceful military station, for so well were the guns concealed that they seemed exempt from German fire, in spite of the fact that they had been in place for half a year. The men sat about underground playing cards and reading newspapers, but the commander of the battery was unwilling that we should go with such a peaceful impression of his guns. He brought his men to action with a word or two and sent six shells sailing at the German first line trenches for our benefit. We left, half deafened, but delighted.

No child could be more eager to show a toy than is a French officer to let a visitor see in some small fashion how the war wags. We went from the battery to a first line trench. It was slow work down miles and miles of camouflaged road to the communicating trench, and all along the line we were stopped by kindly Frenchmen, who wanted us to see how their dugouts were decorated or the nature of their dining room or the first aid dressing station or any little detail of the war with which they were directly concerned. Much can be done with a dugout when a few back numbers of La Vie Parisienne are available. Still, this scheme of decoration may be carried too far. I will never forget the face of a Y. M. C. A. man who joined us at a French officers' mess one day. It was a low ceilinged room, with pine walls, but not an inch of wall was visible, for a complete papering of La Vie Parisienne pictures had been provided. Among the ladies thus drafted for decorative purposes there was perhaps chiffon enough to make a single arm brassard.

Trenches, save in the very active sectors, give the visitor a sense of security. Open places are the ones which try the nerves of civilians, and it was pleasant to walk with a wall of earth on either hand, even if some of us did have to stoop a bit. From the point where we entered the communication trench to the front line was probably not more than half a mile as the crow flies – if, indeed, he is foolish enough to travel over trenches – but the sunken pathway turned and twisted to such an extent that it must have been two miles before we struck even the third line. Here we were held while ever so many dugouts and kitchens and gas alarm stations and telephones were exhibited for us. They were all included in the routine of war, but of a sudden romance popped up from underground. The conducting officer paused at the entrance of a passage. "Another dugout" we thought.

"Bring them up!" said the officer to a soldier, and the poilu scrambled down the steps and came up with a bird cage containing two birds.

"These are the last resort," explained the officer. "We send messages from the trenches by telephone, if we can. If the wires are destroyed we use flashes from a light, but if that station is also broken and we must have help the birds are freed."

Neither pigeon seemed in the least puffed up over the responsibility which rested upon him.

The German trenches were just 400 yards away from the first lines of the French. It was possible to see them by peering over the rim of the trench, but we quickly ducked down again. Presently we grew less cautious, and one or two tried to stare the Germans out of countenance. If they could see that strangers were peeping at them they paid no attention.

The French officer in charge seemed embarrassed. He explained that it was an exceptionally quiet day. Only the day before the Germans had been active with trench mortars, and he couldn't understand why they were sulking now. Possibly the bombardment from the French .75's, which had been going on all day, had softened them a bit. He looked about the trench dejectedly. The soldiers of the front line were playing cards, eating soup or modeling little grotesque figures out of the soft rock which lined the walls of the trenches. He called sharply to a soldier, who fetched a box of rifle grenades out of a cubbyhole and sent half a dozen, one after the other, spinning at the German lines. Probably they fell short, or perhaps the Germans were simply sullen. At any rate, they paid no attention. They were not disposed into being prodded to show off for American visitors.

The officer suddenly thought up a method to retrieve the lost reputation of his trench. If we could only stay until dark he would send us all out on a patroling party right up to the wire in front of the German first line. We declined, and made some little haste to leave this ever so obliging officer. In another moment we feared he would organize an exhibition offensive for our benefit and reserve us places in the first wave.

If things were quiet on the ground there was plenty of activity aloft. It was a clear day, and both sides had big sausage balloons up for observation. Once a German plane tried to attack a French sausage, but it was driven off, and all day long the Germans sought without success to wing the balloon with one of their long range guns. In that particular sector on that particular day the French unquestionably had the mastery of the air. We saw four of their 'planes in the air to every one German, and once a fleet of five cruised over the German lines. The Boche opened on them with shrapnel. It was a clear day, without a breath of wind, and the white puffs clung to the sky at the point where they broke. Presently the French planes swooped much lower, and the Germans opened on them with machine guns. Somebody has said that machine gun fire sounds as if a crazy carpenter was shingling a roof, and somebody else has compared the noise to a typewriter being operated in an upper room, but it is still more like a riveting machine. It has a business-like, methodical sound to me. To my ear there is no malice in a machine gun, but then I have never heard it from an aeroplane.

The officer in charge accompanied us to the end of the communicating trench.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

We told him that we were going directly to Paris.

"Have a good time," he said, "but leave one dinner and one drink for me."

"You are going to Paris?" we asked.

He looked over toward the German wire and smiled a little. "I may," he said.

CHAPTER XV

VERDUN

FROM the hills around Verdun we saw the earth as it must have looked on perhaps the fourth day of creation week. It was all frowsy mud and slime. Man was down deep in the dust from which he will spring again some day. There was not even a foothold for poppies on the hills around Verdun, for mingled with the old earth scars were fresh ones, and there will be more tomorrow.

The Germans have been pushed back of the edges of the bowl in which Verdun lies, and now their only eyes are aeroplanes. Big naval guns are required to reach the city itself, but the Germans are not content to leave the battered town alone. They bang away at ruins and kick a city which is down. They fire, too, at the citadel, but do no more than scratch the top of this great underground fortress.

Our guide and mentor at Verdun was a distinguished colonel, very learned in military tactics and familiar with every phase of the various Verdun campaigns. The extent of his information was borne home to us the first day of the trip, for he stood the party on top of Fort Souville and carried on a technical talk in French for more than half an hour, while German shells, breaking a few hundred yards away, sought in vain to interrupt him.

From the top of Souville it was possible to see gun flashes and to spy, now and again, aeroplanes which darted back and forth all day, but not a soldier of either side was to be seen through the strongest glasses. On no front have men dug in so deeply as at Verdun. They have good reason to snuggle into the earth, for the French have a story that one of their projectiles killed men in a dugout seventy-five feet below the surface. They thought that this terrific penetration must have been due to the fact that the shell hit fairly upon a crack in the concrete and wedged its way through.

Barring plumbing, which is always an after thought in France, the French make the underground dwellings of the soldiers moderately comfortable. There are ventilating plants and electric lights, and in the citadel a motion picture theater. In one underground stronghold we found the telephone central for all the various positions around Verdun. We wondered whether or not he was ever obliged to report, "Your party doesn't answer."

We traveled far underground, and at last the colonel brought us out again near the high, bare spot where the automobiles had been left. As we walked down the road there was a particularly vicious bang some place to our left.

"That wasn't very far away," said the colonel.

This was the first shell which had stirred him to interest or attention. Presently there came another bang, and this seemed just as loud. The colonel paused thoughtfully.

"Maybe one of their aeroplanes has seen us and spotted us for the artillery," he said. "Tell the chauffeurs to turn the cars around at once, and we'll go."

The chauffeurs turned the cars with commendable alacrity and the colonel walked slowly toward them. But his roving glance rested for an instant upon a little ridge across the valley to his left which brought memories to his mind and he stopped in the middle of the road and began: "In the Spring of 1915 – " On and on he went in his beautiful French and described some small affair which might have influenced the entire subsequent course of events. It seemed that if the Germans had varied their plan a little the French defensive scheme would have been upset and all sorts of things would have happened. At the end of twenty minutes he had done full justice to the subject and then he recollected.

"We'd better go now," he said, "the Germans may have spotted us."

We messed with the French officers in the citadel that night and found that they were ready to converse on almost any subject but the war. Literature was their favorite topic. Although the colonel spoke no English, he was familiar with much American literature in translation. Poe he knew well, and he had read a few things of Mark Twain's. Somebody mentioned William James, and a captain quoted at length from an essay called "A Moral Equivalent for War." The lieutenant on my right wanted to know whether Americans still read Walt Whitman, and I wondered whether the same familiarity with French literature would be encountered in any American mess. This little lieutenant had been a professor or instructor some place or other when the war began and had several poetical dramas in verse to his credit. He had written a play called "Dionysius" in rhymed couplets. At the beginning of the war he had enlisted as a private and had seen much hard service, which had brought him two wounds, a medal and a commission. He hoped ardently to survive the war, for he felt that he could write ever so much better because he had been thrown into close relationship with peasants and laborers. He found their talk meaty, and at times rich in poetry. One day, he remembered, his regiment had marched along a country road in a fine spring dawn. His comrade to the right, a Parisian peddler, remarked as they passed a gleaming forest: "There is a wood where God has slept." The little lieutenant said that if he had the luck to live through the war he was going to write plays without a thought of the Greeks and their mythology. He hoped, if he should live, to write for the many as well as the few. I wondered to myself just what sort of plays one of our American highbrows would write if he served a campaign with the 69th or drove an army mule.

The French army tries to let the men at the front live a little better than elsewhere if it is possible to get the food up to them. In the citadel at Verdun the men dine in style now that the incoming roads are pretty much immune from shell fire. Our luncheon with the officers on the night of the twenty-fifth of September, for instance, consisted of hors d'œuvres, omelette aux fines herbes, bifsteck, pommes parmentier, confitures, dessert, café, champagne and pinard. And for dinner we had potage vermicelli, œfs bechamel, jambon aux epinards, chouxfleur au jus, duchesse chocolat, fruits, dessert, café and, of course, champagne and pinard.

We spent the night in the citadel and a little after midnight the German planes came over. They bombed the town and dropped a few missiles on the citadel, but they did no more than dent the roof a bit. Our rooms were almost fifty meters underground and the bombs sounded little louder than heavy rain on the roof. Certainly they did not disturb the Frenchman just down the hall. His snores were ever so much louder than the German bombs.

On the morning of our second day we crossed the Meuse and drove down heavily camouflaged roads to Charny. Five hundred yards away a French battery was under heavy bombardment from big German guns. We could see the earth fly up from hits close to the gun emplacements. Five hundred yards away men were being killed and wounded, but the soldiers in Charny loafed about and smoked and chatted and paid no attention. This bombardment was not in their lives at all. The men of the battery might have been the folk who walk upside down on the other side of the earth.

"The last time I came to Charny," said the Colonel, "I had to get in a dugout and stay five hours because the Germans bombarded it so hard.

"But that was in the afternoon," he reassured us; "the Germans never bombard Charny in the morning."

We stood and watched the two sheets of fire poured upon the battery until somebody called attention to the fact that it was almost noon and we returned to the citadel. And at two o'clock that afternoon we stood on a hilltop overlooking the valley and sure enough the Germans were giving Charny its daily strafe. Shells were bursting all around the peaceful road we had traveled in the morning. Probably by now the men in the battery were idling about and taking their ease. After all there is something to be said for a foe who plays a system.

CHAPTER XVI

WE VISIT THE BRITISH ARMY

HE was twenty-six and a major, but he was three years old in the big war, and that is the only age which counts today in the British army. The little major was the first man I ever met who professed a genuine enthusiasm for war. It had found him a black sheep in the most remote region of a big British colony and had tossed him into command of himself and of others. Utterly useless in the pursuit of peace, war had proved a sufficiently compelling schoolmaster to induce the study of many complicated mechanical problems, of subtler ones of psychology, not to mention two languages. It is true that his German was limited to "Throw up your hands" and "Come out or we'll bomb you," but he could carry on a friendly and fairly extensive conversation in French. The tuition fee was two wounds.

He was a fine, fair sample of the slashing, swanking British army which backs its boasts with battalions and makes its light words good with heavy guns. We rode together in a train for several hours on the way to the British front and when I told him I was a newspaper man he was eager to tell me something of what the British army had done, was doing and would do.

"If they'd cut out wire and trenches and machine guns and general staffs," said the little major, "we'd win in two months." Without these concessions he did not expect to see the end for at least a year. However, he was concerned for the most part with more concrete things than predictions, and I'd best let him wander on as he did that afternoon with no interruption save an occasional question. He was returning to the front after being wounded. There had been boating and swimming and tennis and "a deuced pretty girl" down there at the resort where he had been recuperating, and yet he was glad to be back.